dimecres, 20 de juny de 2007

Deixeu que les bèsties es devorin entre elles

I hereby declare victory. I believe the Sunni insurgency in Iraq has collapsed, and all the casualty tallies that the insurgents are desperately trying to ratchet-up won't convince me otherwise. The odor of defeat hangs heavily around the "dead-enders" — a term I'd like to bring back into vogue because it's an apt description for those gangs that remain to be hunted down, and who will be responsible for the baseline violence we will continue to see there, but at levels Iraqis can live with and still prosper.

Three months ago, I wrote a column on these pages, "Jihadist Meltdown." In it, I envisioned the endgame of the insurgency — the prospect of jihadists turning on jihadists. Over the last two weeks, the Sunni strongholds of western Baghdad have witnessed street battles between the two main insurgent factions responsible for the bulk of violence in Iraq: Al Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq and the Islamic Army.